What Fits Into a Two-Hour Adventure?

[gamerprinter]

Half a one-shot? Since a one-shot is 4 to 4.5 hours on average.

 

[GMMichael]

. . .I would plan about 15 minutes for intro and simple exploration followed by 15 minutes for an encounter/fight. Move to main place like a tomb with 3 rooms there. Have a trap or puzzle and a small encounter with the final threat being a larger fight. Leave 10-15 minutes for conclusion like returning to town with the lost child or family heirloom or such.

There is also good arguments for just starting at the dungeon after 5 minutes of setup.

Starting at the dungeon/location seems essential, given that I've seen PCs spend at least an hour shopping and wagon-driving. 10 minutes or less for conclusion seems reasonable...but with a short timeline of 2 hours, I want to spend as much time as possible on rising action and climax.

 

[pemerton]

Is this D&D-specific?

 

[payn]

Paizo has many many society scenarios. They are built for a 4 hour window, but could be trimmed down to 2 hours. They usually contain an info dump in the beginning, and then an investigation, a few fights, maybe some traps or puzzles. You can probably chop out a few encounters and they would hold up.

In theory adventure league would work like this too, but I don't have any experience with it.

 

[Jer]

Two hours? With my group?

One combat encounter and one non-combat encounter. Because there will be a half hour to 45 minutes of chit-chat and generally catching up, then either I start them in media res in a combat encounter or we start them with some kind of non-combat encounter that will probably lead to violence.

(We've also determined that 2 hours for my main group just isn't worth it for everyone's schedules - if we can't get 4 hours for everyone then we'll have a board game night instead. We're all too social to get a satisfying RPG session in in under 4 hours.)

 

[overgeeked]

As mentioned, it depends on the system you use.

In 5E you could get through one combat.

In Call of Cthulhu that would be about half of a standard one-shot scenario.

In a rules light game you could storm the beach at Normandy, assassinate Franz Ferdinand, start a revolution, colonize a planet, defend an outpost against alien invasion, summon the hordes of hell, or just about anything you can imagine.

 

[Bluenose]

I'm another who thinks it'll depend on the system. Also on how experienced the players and GM are with the system, if both are still learning then everything takes longer. And on whether characters are already available.

I could certainly run a group familiar with the system and with existing characters through a Traveller adventure like Annic Nova, Marooned on Marduk, and several others that don't have much combat but with plenty of exploration and puzzles in two hours. It's quite possible I did the first, because when I threw that at my group it was in a session where they'd also done some trading, interacted with officials, and then got asked to go to search for a distress call; and there was time afterwards to for them to explain the situation to the officials who got them involved. Four hour session, so probably around two hours for the adventure portion.

 

[Jd Smith1]

(We've also determined that 2 hours for my main group just isn't worth it for everyone's schedules - if we can't get 4 hours for everyone then we'll have a board game night instead.

Yeah, I won't game for less than 4 hours, with the ability to run over if needed. But then, I don't do one-offs, either.

Still, you have to work with the schedule you have. If your group is focused, perhaps a murder mystery plot.

 

[GMMichael]

I would plan about 15 minutes for intro and simple exploration followed by 15 minutes for an encounter/fight. Move to main place like a tomb with 3 rooms there. Have a trap or puzzle and a small encounter with the final threat being a larger fight. Leave 10-15 minutes for conclusion like returning to town with the lost child or family heirloom or such.

This looks like a minimum of four hours for me and my players. In no small part because the simple exploration at the beginning would become 45 minutes of looking for clues when there's no mystery to solve. Yet.

There is also good arguments for just starting at the dungeon after 5 minutes of setup.

Especially under a time crunch. But my eyes see "5 minutes of prep," which makes me think that I should plan one thing for the session, and let random tables/improv handle the rest.

Is this D&D-specific?

Not if I can help it.

In a rules light game you could storm the beach at Normandy, assassinate Franz Ferdinand, start a revolution, colonize a planet, defend an outpost against alien invasion, summon the hordes of hell, or just about anything you can imagine.

Good point between the lines here: if you have to go to the rule book repeatedly or work to agree on rules with others, you'll do less stuff in-game. One of my two-hour games with Modos 2 went like this (after and not including character creation): heroes accept a quest to find missing hunters, search for them and set up camp, chat with one hunter outside a bear cave, go inside carefully, start a fight with the smaller bear. Not enough time for fighting the mama bear and looting With a little more urging and better rules-juggling, I could have squeezed the last part in.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That really depends a lot on the rules system.

In say, Scum and Villainy, I might tell the players "You get a message from an ally that he urgently needs someone picked up from a nearby planet and away from his pursuers."
Players are going to the meeting point, take the guy to their landing pad, take off, get past traffic in orbit, and jump to hyperspace. Add to that complications as seems managable considering the remaining time.

??? That's not how that game is supposed to work.

But S&V is a good answer, because you can do a score in 2 hours. You just aren't giving a mission to the players, though -- they give you the mission.